Thursday, May 20, 2010

New Art Thursday: Everybody Draw Muhammad.

I wanted to talk about this.

First of all, I think he turned out looking more like a 2nd Edition Gnome than the Prophet of Islam. Secondly - I have no idea if the translations of "just a man" are accurate - I used Google Translate and checked 'em against any other I could find. I left some languages out just because I don't have font support on my laptop. The top bit in yellow says, "there is no god and Muhammad was just a man." I don't think I'm happy with that part.

Now I want to say something about why I drew this image, and about my problems with the whole "Everybody Draw Muhammad" thing.

I joined up because I stumbled upon the "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" poster and searched around a bit for the story. Then the news outlets picked it up and I went ahead and joined the Facebook group (well, one of them, anyway).

I thought long and hard about what I was going to draw (which is ironic, since I just drew him sitting there). At first I was going to draw Muhammad in some parody of an iconic American image like American Gothic (with Aisha) or one of Warhol's or Rockwell's works. Then I changed my mind and I was going to draw something about the hero of a major world religion having had sexual relations with a six year old.

I opted out of that one, because it turned me off drawing. I was going to make some kind of political statement, but let's be honest, I'm about as political as a rubber fish. I was going to copy the "Hope" or "Change" Obama Image - but decided that could be construed the wrong way, and probably was going to get done to death anyway.

I ended up just drawing him, since that seems to be what gets people in a fuss anyway; shit, Parker & Stone only drew a bear costume and said it was him.

"Fuck it," I said and looked around the Facebook pages and I was kind of disgusted.

I know that all I'm looking at is Anonymous (even though it's not), but there were so many lines crossed today. I'm not sure I'm happy about more than one of them. But I'm especially disturbed by the presence of Anonymous in the same social network as my family and friends.

Yeah, yeah, sure. I bet quite a few of my family and friends are Anonymous (and if you don't know what I mean by that - I'm referring to the message and image boards, and any forum really, that allows contribution without identification. Usually these places are filled with the most disgusting and vile filth that you have to wade through to get to the gold you're looking for, be it comedy or porn or what-have-you).

But I didn't understand the necessity of drawing Muhammad fucking a pig (or a goat or a sheep or a horse or a missile[wtf?]). I didn't think it was necessary to harp on the whole pedophile thing. They know he was a pedophile, they like him that way. It's fucked up, but all you really had to do was draw the prophet. If you're going to get your fatwa just by drawing the man eating an ice cream cone.

Holy Shit! I should have drawn Muhammad eating a damn ice cream cone!!!

Damnit!

aRGHHH

Okay, I'm done. I just thought too many people took a look at "oh here, we're sticking it to the Muslims," and shouted for joy because they thought it was open season to say (draw) anything they wanted to draw of Islam's icon (I'm loving that word today for some reason). It just rubs me the wrong way.

I guess, if you look at it right, I'm being hypocritical. They see any depiction of their prophet as blasphemous and evil, which is what I did. Drawing the man in compromising positions is meant to draw out "even more anger than angry enough to kill you." Which I don't get.

Do you suppose this was a contest to see who could actually get killed over it?

I just wanted to protest the response to South Park (and other cartoonists), and maybe strike a blow for free speech. I knew it was going to piss some people off, but I didn't want to do any more than that.

I think all religions end up being an overall force for evil and wickedness in the world, but that doesn't mean we have to treat those who believe in them now like trash. Nobody really deserves any respect, but maybe we ought to give everyone a little anyway.

I'm not sorry for my participation in the event. It was challenging and kind of fun (and yeah, a little bit "fuckyou" to the man (I'm looking at you Comedy Central, you fucking cowards); but I doubt I would do it again. It was too hard wading through all the filth to find the good ones.

I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.